Here. Part Two

Momma are you there? My adoptive parents aren’t my world anymore. They are not my sole safety net. I’m growing. And so is my curiosity about who I am.

Momma. I am not settled. I dream about you in the night trying to find you. Momma, I need you. Look, Momma. Look at your picture in my hand. The first photo I’ve seen of shared blood. Momma. Are you there?Reflected in my eyes? In my personality?In the color of my hair?I need you. Right here. In the sides of my mind where my adoptive family doesn’t fit. My Momma. My Daddy. Who are you?Breathe in: three… two… one… Zero idea of who I am without you. My body is scared without you here. I need you. I need to feel surrounded. Who needs their own body when it doesn’t know what to do without you. Who needs their own reflection when I see nothing around me that fits. I do. I need you. Adoptees sometimes still feel childlike as adults. In an instant, I can take myself back to being five. Trauma tells now time. It bends and twists and folds back on itself so we get confused about where in life we are physically and where we are at in time. There is not a day that goes by when I don’t trip or stumble back to five. I remember seeing a boy in an assembly who didn’t have legs. It’s the first time I was able to put a word and a visual to how I felt. Different. It didn’t matter that I was a white child adopted into a white family. I knew I was different. I knew they did not look like me and I knew that I did not look like them. I felt as different as the boy with no legs showing us his prosthetics during Show and Tell. The poem above are the thoughts and feelings I had at five. The first time I saw a photo of my mother I was about 10-12. While many of my curiosities have been answered. While I now Know my biological parents. Always, deep down, this child remains. Forever holding the pain of a lost identity on a floor that felt as secure as a wobbly hole-laden safety net.